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ABSTRACT
This paper reviews the literature on understanding homelessness. It criticizes approaches that ignore, distort or diminish the humanity of homeless people, or else, add little to our understanding of that humanity. In particular, it rejects what it calls “epidemiological” approaches, which deny the possibility of agency for homeless people, insofar as those approaches view the situation of those people largely as a “social fact”, to be explained in terms of causal variables or “risk factors” of different kinds. It evaluates the concept of homelessness pathways as a way of making sense of research findings on homelessness. It takes issue with realist approaches, insofar as these approaches purport to identify “underlying” mechanisms that “cause” homelessness, and discusses ethnographic approaches focused on “homeless culture”. Throughout, the paper emphasizes the need to understand homelessness as multidimensional and storied, and concludes with a plea for more research that looks at the whole life of a homeless person, rather than just at selected episodes of rooflessness.
Notes
1. Typically, this occurs through social construction, a largely political process of identifying and measuring a “social problem”, followed by the framing of policy designed to solve, or otherwise address and manage, that problem (see, e.g. Jacobs, Kemeny, and Manzi Citation1999).
2. Another example of the importance of the territorial dimension of homelessness comes from the attempts of homeless people to control their own space, e.g. by creating an obstacle on the street, creating a safe place to sleep, defining a visible identity such as Cardboard City and creating a meaningful living space that can be called “home” (Cloke, May, and Johnsen Citation2010; Ravenhill Citation2008, 177).
3. In the terminology used in a later section of this paper, May did not find any clear pathways trodden by the long-term homeless.
4. May is at pains to emphasize that this did not necessarily mean that they needed or wanted some form of supported housing or permanent accommodation. He cites the case of “Rob”, who saw repeated episodes of rough sleeping as a “solution” to a broader set of problems relating to unemployment, providing him with an opportunity to exercise his construction skills in building shelters and renovating squats (May Citation2000, 624).
5. Given the problems experienced with sustaining private tenancies, May (Citation2000, 635) cautions against an over-reliance on this sector to solve the housing needs of single homeless people. Recent research by Crane, Warnes, and Coward (Citation2011) indicates that these problems of insecurity, poor conditions and poor management in the private rented sector persist up to the present day.
6. This conclusion is echoed widely in the literature. For example: “The other risk factor [apart from poverty] now common to the overwhelming majority of homeless people is unemployment” (Fitzpatrick, Kemp, & Klinker Citation2000, 28).
7. This follows Seal’s (Citation2005) identification of three types of homeless condition: “bad” (deviant), “mad” (ill) and “sad” (victims). Homelessness is said to result from the homeless person’s own actions or bad behaviour, their health problems (mental or physical) or the failures of market and state provision. Similarly, Rosenthal (Citation2000) identified “slackers”, “lackers” and “unwilling victims”. This typology was found both in official circles and among homeless people themselves. The three types of label are then reflected in three official approaches to solving homelessness: responsibilization or “normalisation” (Ravenhill Citation2008, 207) (emphasizing behaviour modification), medicalization (emphasizing treatment) and the “battle for the mind” (Ravenhill Citation2008, 207), where the individual is enabled to cope with their own past and with future events, connecting them with the reality of mainstream society, and giving them a sense of hope and purpose in dealing with that society – perhaps, not so much (or not only) a battle for the mind but more a struggle for a life worth living.
8. Consider also Becker’s (Citation1963, 25) concept of a deviant career, where homelessness can be interpreted as a form of deviance, following a path that takes a homeless person away from “conventional ways of life”.
9. Chamberlayne (Citation2004, 347), for example, refers to an “emotional retreat” in homelessness research and service provision.
10. For further useful critique, see Robinson Citation2008a.
11. The classic epidemiological example is that of smoking (the independent variable) and cancer (the dependent variable).
12. There are countless equally banal examples in the literature.
13. “Homelessness, mobility and spatiality shifts over time, often charting complicated pathways into and out of different accommodation, different ‘resting places’” (Cloke, Milbourne, and Widdowfield Citation2003, 32).
14. As Clapham (Citation2003, 126) says: “The pathways approach draws attention to both the holistic nature of people’s problems and the importance of taking a long perspective on outcomes’.
15. The work of Fitzpatrick (Citation1999) suggests that location is another important variable, at least for young people in urban areas. The study identified pathways relating to three types of location: a home neighbourhood, a city homeless network and a city centre. Cloke, May, and Johnsen (Citation2010, 62) describe the homeless city, in some detail, as “constituted by a complex assemblage of places to sleep, eat, earn and hang out”, where the “journeys and pauses of homeless people … are punctuated by different kinds of performativities”, which are “in turn bound up in complex ways with the architecture of the city itself”.
16. Ravenhill (Citation2008, 139) comments further: “Institutionalization must be viewed in terms of the life-course rather than an episode in time and its immediate aftermath. Thus it is important to view why people entered the institution, their experiences in the institution and the long-term impact of that institution as one long process within the context of their lives. Institutions appeared to delay rooflessness as well as trigger it” (see in particular Table 6.2 on 140–141).
17. Note that even this clinical definition is fuzzy, as it involves an element of circularity (trauma defined by reference to a traumatic event). Does a traumatic event involve, for example, violence of some kind?
18. “Complex trauma” is the term used to refer to “sustained exposure to traumatic events” (Maguire, Johnson, Vostanis, Keats, and Remington Citation2009, 3).
19. Maybe this happens because in epidemiology, in order to prevent infectious disease, for example, it is not essential to know exactly how the germ damages the body but only how to avoid coming into contact with that germ. Preventing homelessness, however, is completely different. If we accept, for the sake of argument, that complex trauma in childhood produces psychological disorders, which increase the risk of becoming homeless later in life, we still need to know something about the relationship between the disorders that someone is suffering and their housing (and other) circumstances in order to be able to help them (continue to) live a settled life. This is not to rule out the possibility, however, that there exist some points of comparison between preventing infection and preventing homelessness – for example, by avoiding the influence of those who make infection or homelessness more likely.
20. “The implication of this research is that those services whose clients remain stable, even if function is less than optimal, are in fact producing relative improvements in the outcome for young homeless people” (Martijn and Sharpe Citation2006, 10). Maybe there is a case for “rehab and therapy first”, rather than the currently popular “housing first” and “employment first”. “Resettlement” needs to be understood in its widest possible sense.
21. Ravenhill (Citation2008, 121–122) found that a significant proportion of children being thrown out of their homes came from middle-class families. This does not necessarily mean, however, that those children had more resources available to them than other children.
22. His private tenancy, for example, does not look as if it will last much longer.
23. Mallett, Rosenthal, Keys, and Averill (Citation2010, 29) argue that the concept of pathways has advantages over alternatives such as trajectories and careers: “Where the notion of homeless trajectories seems too over-determined, the starting point too predictive of the direction taken, and while the points in the process identified by homeless careers might enable intervention, the pathways metaphor both suggests structure (a well-trodden track), and also implies choice (a negotiated journey)”. From their research, however, it is not clear what exactly are the “common routes” that young people take into, through and out of homelessness.
24. This finding is, however, contradicted by at least some (more recent) research on hostels (see Somerville, Brown, Scullion, and Morris Citation2011).
25. Ravenhill (Citation2008, 182–183) warns against over-simplified and one-dimensional interpretations of pathways. Citing the example of Fitzpatrick (Citation2000), she complains that “the focus remained on routes into housing, not the complete resettlement process: physical, emotional and psychological reintegration into housed society … There was [also] a tendency to oversimplify exit routes. The pathways used relatively short time-spans as a measure of successful reintegration ([for example] six months). This is despite existing evidence to suggest that this stage of resettlement takes far longer (in excess of 18 months; Dane Citation1998)”.
26. Alternatively, one could argue that young people from poorer families are actually less likely to return to their parental home, as this would mean returning to a life of poverty. Flatau, James, Watson, Wood, and Hendershott (Citation2007), for example, found that young people were more likely to leave home if their parents were unemployed, and also, once they had left, less likely to return home. So, “poverty” seems to explain why young people leave home and why they do not leave home, why they return and why they do not return. It explains everything, and consequently explains nothing. Ultimately, Fitzpatrick’s attempt to explain homelessness in terms of poverty fails because it takes no real account of agency. Poverty plays a part in homelessness, certainly, but its relationship to homelessness is complex.
27. These stories are “true” in Gadamer’s (Citation2006) sense, in that they enhance being (of the storyteller, of the listener, of everyone and everything).
28. These motivations seem to correspond to what Somerville (Citation1992) called the spiritual and emotional dimensions, respectively, of homelessness. McNaughton is, therefore, attempting to explain homelessness on the assumption that the life of each individual is multidimensional.
29. Not only in the management of hostels but in the provision of settled accommodation, agencies sometimes made it more, rather than less, difficult for homeless people to exit permanently from homelessness, usually by not taking sufficient account of their wider needs, particularly relating to making new friends (of the right kind!) and restoring ties with their families (McNaughton Citation2008, 123–128, 155–160).
30. Complexity theory can be classified as a realist theory (Byrne Citation1998).
31. Later on, McNaughton Nicholls (Citation2009) attempted to explain edgework in terms of contextualized rational action, which is compatible with complexity theory but lacks a theory of context. More recently, she has drawn upon Nussbaum’s capabilities approach (McNaughton Nicholls Citation2010), which also lacks a theory of context but enables her to identify a number of interesting “complex intersections”, for example, between homelessness and drug-taking, between mental illness, destitution and despair, between rehousing and resettlement and between the enabling and constraining functions of housing.
32. These issues are all discussed in the next section.
33. I have selected Ravenhill’s research as being the most deeply analysed and self-conscious study of homelessness from a culturalist perspective. There have, however, been other ethnographies of homelessness by British researchers, a classic example being Hall (Citation2003).
34. For Ravenhill (Citation2008, 145–146), homeless culture is a subculture, defined as “the system of beliefs, values and norms adopted by a significant minority in any given society or culture, in this case, the roofless, homeless or precariously housed in Britain … Subcultures (including the homeless culture) have discernable identifiers, for example language, dress, demeanour and behaviour. These give an identity to both the group and individuals within it … Subcultures enable members to become ‘mainstream’ within their group. A key feature of the culture is its paradoxical capacity to absorb loners, who remain isolated yet part of the homeless culture … In general homeless culture is characterized by dense social networks and reciprocity, with people experiencing anxiety and depression when they leave or are denied access”. This subculture itself has subcultures, such as street drinkers, drug addicts, daycentre/hostel groupies, specialist daycentre groupies (with mental health problems), precariously housed street users (squatters, flophouse dwellers, etc), intermittent participants (loners and drifters), homeless advocates and activists (who used to be homeless) and the “homeless at heart” (Ravenhill Citation2008, 147–155). In their research, Cloke, May, and Johnsen (Citation2010, 84, 134) found evidence, even within hostels, of distinct subcultures of “pissheads”, “junkies” and “straightheads”.
35. Similarly, Cloke, May, and Johnsen (Citation2010, 184) describe local scenes of homelessness as resulting from “particular interconnections between service provision and service consumption”.
36. “Providing people with a tenancy is not resettlement, but rehousing. The transition from rooflessness to integration into housed society is far more than a route into adequate accommodation and support to keep that accommodation. There are a series of physical, emotional and psychological changes that need to take place. These form the rehabilitation process” (Ravenhill Citation2008, 203).
37. Many homeless people, however, are alienated from their families, so caring intermediaries are required in order to re-establish contact. Other sources of support included probation officers and religious organizations.
38. For more on the ethic of care, see Barnes (Citation2012).
39. This is perhaps where “professionalism” comes in – Cloke, May, and Johnsen (Citation2010, 246) recognise that what they call the “voluntary attitude” is necessary, but not sufficient.
40. Gowan (Citation2010) reports that only about 13% of homeless people in the USA worked regularly, and much of this was “radically temporary” (147), while no more than 20% were likely to be receiving General Assistance (like income support in UK) at any one time (305).
41. In this respect, the USA is perhaps more like Brazil, India, China or South Africa than most European countries.
42. Through routine police harassment and, on the part of local government, a combination of “architecture to repel invaders, surveillance cameras to watch them, subsidiary police to roust and remove them, sprinklers to drench them, and stadium lighting to prevent them from sleep” (Gowan Citation2010, 237). In general: “We spray our fellow men and women with freezing water, slash their tents, destroy their shanties, and tow their cars, all in the name of a compassionate crusade to save them from their inner demons” (Gowan Citation2010, 272).
43. The researcher as listener is inevitably part of the story itself. This point is well illustrated in the case of Ravenhill, whose pregnancy during her fieldwork prompted major responses from some of her interlocutors, especially a sense of grief from having lost contact with their own children.